Transitions

Thoughts of my hometown saturate me at this point in time. Last summer I visited and will do so again this year before the snow flies.

Transitions

I

 

Miasma seeps across

the South Dakota state line.

Scant water tumbles over the falls

of my birthplace. The park no longer

an oasis in this hidebound town.

Our childhood neighborhood

now a collection of seedy houses

long in need of paint.

A hot, prairie wind blows

and I cannot breathe.

II

My brother's verdant acreage,

once a thought for spreading 

his ashes, now eaten by industry.

Talk of moving more remotely

peppered his speech

long before commercial creep.

Then came the CT scan.

The gravel road leading to his place

newly paved and renamed.

His mailbox and fire number, missed

by the bulldozer, cling to the edge

of the complex like faithful lookouts.

A farmer's field flows into the sunset

across the road. The cornstalks rustle

with the sound of a spirit sighing.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor